The great vuvuzela conundrum: Ban the annoying World Cup horn? It's not so simple

If you've been watching any of the World Cup coverage, you have come to just accept the incessant, monotonous, droning moan that accompanies every match, the insufferable wailing that has forced at least this viewer to watch her television with the volume turned down.

The source of that sound, of course, is the now-infamous vuvuzela, a plastic horn that has many soccer fans, announcers and even players screaming for a little peace and quiet.

But one person's deafening nuisance is - we have been told by the vuvuzela's staunch defenders in South Africa - another's national treasure. (How a cheap-looking plastic trumpet can be a vital part of culture is a question for another column.) So who emerges victorious in the matchup between cacophony and culture?

It's not easy.

Indeed, the vuvuzela may represent an interesting sociological conundrum: In the battle between the ancient and the modern, the sacred and profane, tradition and practicality, which one should win?

Maybe a compromise is in order. Keep the symbol, lose the sound.

To be perfectly honest, if it were up to me, I suppose I'd toss 'em out along with 2002's Thundersticks. Sure, sacred traditions are important, but profane pragmatism must also be considered, and here there's a higher good at stake.

The World Cup has always been the last, best way to increase the influence of soccer in a country that continues to prefer football - the one with the pigskin - even despite the arrival of an oh-so-handsome David Beckham. So making the World Cup experience an enjoyable one for a wider audience than the one actually privileged enough to watch it already should be a goal - no pun intended - of the quadrennial event.

But it's not just up to me. And before anyone accuses me of Western myopia, let me state clearly - this isn't about national culture, it's about fan culture. As anyone who roots for the Yankees, Mets, Jets or Giants knows, the relationship between those who fill the stands and the competitors on the field is nothing to laugh at or meddle with casually. Where fandom has always enjoyed a relatively lowbrow existence, it's also a verifiably religious one, where yelling obscenities at the opposing team passes for ritual, a signed baseball card is a legitimate relic, and the Hall of Fame is hagiography.

So as a sports purist, I'm reluctant to put the crass needs of television viewers 8,000 miles away and sports announcers in a glass booth above the communal needs of the fans in the stands. That's a sacred congregation, participating in a ritualistic liturgy every time they leap to their feet in ecstasy, raise their arms in praise, open their mouths in eucharistic anticipation and yes, blow on that stupid horn.

Which brings me to the compromise. Let's keep the vuvuzelas, but as a mere symbol, and not as an obnoxious noisemaker that makes me want to rip my arm off and throw it at my TV.

Selfish as it may sound, the idea isn't without anthropological precedent.

Famed religious sociologist Mircea Eliade studied the Achilpa tribe of central Australia, which got around such sacred-profane conflicts by using a totem, or sacred pole. The totem was a mobile stand-in for sacred, bringing order to a profane world. Time passes, people move. But the totem was there to keep the culture a constant.

In our case, the South African horn is sacred, but that godawful noise it makes is most certainly profane. So let's take a page from the Achilpa handbook. The fans can have their horns, but not in the stadiums. Or what about a vuvuzela ceremony at the start of matches? If the horn represents a sacred culture, then the object isn't utilitarian anyway - it's a totem, and merely symbolic. The noise it makes, however, is not.

Unless someone out there has a graduate degree in vuvuzela culture, we probably aren't going to solve this by the time the World Cup is over. This year it will be - yikes - yet another draw.

But somewhere between the sacred and profane, tradition and modernity, lies the answer. In the meantime, South Africa, could you keep it down?